Nelson & His World

One problem faced by a successful frigate captain was manning the prizes. Prize crews were often small, and sometimes commanded by inexperienced midshipmen. Some prizes were lost to the weather and some were retaken by prisoners left on board. On a successful cruise, a captain might find himself so short-handed that he had to return to port.

I have read that Thomas Cochrane alleviated this problem by over-manning his ships. Is there any evidence for this? If so, how were the crew over and above the official complement paid? Out of his own pocket, and out of his share of the prize money?

Tony!

As no one has given an authoritative reply to your question about Cochrane’s crews, I will hazard a guess.

1. I have not studied all Cochrane’s muster rolls, but I am fairly familiar with his papers and career and have never seen anything to confirm the story that he over-manned his ships to supply extra men for prize crews.
2. It would, as you say, have been administratively difficult – and Cochrane would certainly have had to pay and feed for any extra men himself.
3. Would he need to? Napoleonic frigates were heavily manned – indeed for the performance of routine operations (ie apart for the extremely rare possibilities of action with a ship of similar force), they were overmanned. To operate effectively, an East Indiaman of equal tonnage had a crew of 70: a frigate, one of 240. Frigates had the advantage of being able to outrun anything bigger and catch anything smaller. Any commander could therefore adapt his operations even it not at maximum strength: it is difficult to believe he any would have to return to port in these circumstances.
4. As we all know, because of the scale of the war, manning any RN ship was difficult and needed extreme measures like the press gang and quota acts. There is no evidence that Cochrane’s ships were any different. Indeed, the fact that he had to use press gangs (and got into trouble with the local authorities for using them) is on the record.
5. Cochrane’s flare for self publicizing memoirs (and the happy accident that Captain Marriot was one of his midshipmen) has given modern readers an exaggerated impression of his skill as a prize taker compared with other captains whose achievements were not handed down to posterity – even though they were probably just as well known at the time.
6. The voyage of the ‘Pallas’ apart (and others captains had coups just as good to boast about), it is unlikely that Cochrane was regarded at the time as being more dramatically successful than numerous other successful frigate commanders. Tom Wareham’s detailed study of ‘The Star Captains’ seems to confirm this. It is therefore unlikely that Cochrane’s ships had any extra allure for potential recruits; and there is no evidence that men were queuing up to join - which would have been the case if he had been over-recruiting.

Brian

Thank you Brian, for your detailed answer – clearly very much more than just a ‘guess’! In the absence of precise numbers (which I wasn’t expecting), I am certainly persuaded by all your arguments.

The source of the statement, D.A.B. Ronald, ‘Young Nelsons’, provided no supporting evidence or reference. I must admit also that since posting this query, I have come across other assertions that somewhat undermine my confidence in the book, such as that at Trafalgar ‘Nelson had at his disposal the full might of the Channel Fleet, comprising in all 84 ships of the line and frigates’. He also describes the build up of the blockading fleet at Cadiz as the ‘remorseless build up of Britain’s Home Fleet in the Channel’ . Elsewhere he implies that William Pitt took the decision to resume war with France in 1803, he refers to Nelson’s band of brothers at the Battle of the Nile as a ‘makeshift squadron Nelson had somehow cobbled together into the semblance of a fighting unit’ , and he states categorically that the practice of ‘starting’ men was one and the same thing as the punishment of ‘running the gauntlet’!

Hmm… Maybe I'm over-critical, but we can’t let some of that pass without challenge, can we?

Although not related to Cochrane, I have recently been reading Dudley Pope's "The Devil Himself" about the mutiny aboard HMS Danae in the Channel. Pope talks at length about the difficulty of recruitment. He argues that one of the reasons for the mutiny was that men were pressed from merchant ships (both British and neutral and sometimes even by offering captured french sailors the opportunity to enlist). Men were also pressed from privateers and smugglers. Once the balance tipped from professional Royal Navy sailors (be they Irish, English, Scottish, Swedish, Jamaican etc. etc.) to pressed men from smuggling vessels Lord Proby suffered the mutiny.

The muster books show that although his official compliment was 140 (I think, although I could be a little off), at the time of the mutiny he had less than 80 men aboard. Men disappeared from the ship for many reasons, as prize crews, taken by a senior captain to bolster his own numbers, desertion, illness and death.

As I understand it, Cochrane, along with other successful frigate captains, were able to recruit more easily and maintain their numbers. I have never heard of a Captain taking additional crew in volume to replace prize crews. There have been many cases where they have taken their "followers" with them to a new ship. Captain Hugh Pigot, for example, took 18 men with him when he transferred into the Hermione, many of whom were responsible for his death.